Intel, Cymer Sign EUV Agreement

SAN DIEGO & SANTA CLARA, Calif., Jan. 26 -- Intel Corp. announced today an agreement to provide $20 million in funding to Cymer Inc., a supplier of deep ultraviolet (DUV) light sources used in semiconductor manufacturing, over the next three years to accelerate development of production-worthy extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography light sources.

The companies said a key issue confronting the commercialization efforts of EUV lithography is the ability to increase source output power to meet the wafer throughput requirements of high-volume manufacturing, while minimizing the cost of owning EUV lithography tools.

"Accelerating EUV technology development to enable its successful implementation in high-volume manufacturing for the 32-nm node in 2009 is a critical mission at Intel," said Peter Silverman, an Intel Fellow and director of Intel's lithography capital equipment development.

"This agreement will further enable Intel and Cymer to concentrate on the critical technology challenges and on delivering a cost-effective, commercial EUV source solution to produce development tools in 2006 and to meet the industry's 2009 production timeline," he said.

For more information, visit: www.cymer.com